All in One Desktops

I have an older laptop but was thinking along the lines of an all-in-one for my next purchase. Love the idea of a good sized monitor and a separate keyboard. I seem to have trouble keyboarding on these newer laptop keyboards. Has anyone made a purchase of an all-in-one? A middle of the road all-in-one runs about $1,000.

1. The main problem with all in one is if one part breaks you have to fix/replace it all

I'd be careful to find one with a strong history of reliability and a good warranty, Amazon reviews can be a good source of information.

If you upgrade a piece at a time it's easier on the budget, you could try plugging a keyboard, a mouse and big monitor into your current laptop and sticking it under the desk somewhere even. Shop around and you could do that for $200 to $300 for a 24" 1080p wide screen and a near top of the line keyboard/mouse.

Then just upgrade the laptop to a compact box computer, takes about five minutes tops to change the plugs around.

2. Thanks Fumesucker

Thank you for your good advice. After your reply, I checked, and Apple has a very compact computer (about $600). I have never used an Apple before. Do you know of any PC manufacturers that have a computer that compact? As you said, the monitor and keyboard are relatively inexpensive.

Really the monitor, keyboard, mouse and speakers are what you actually interact with, spend a bit more on that stuff and get the best you can. If you are doing what most people do with a computer these days what's inside the actual computer box isn't all that important except for high end gaming and maybe watching HD videos, although I have several obsolete computers around here that will do video just fine.

16. I've opened up numerous HP AIO's over the past month

They've gone out of their way to make it dirt simple. Most require loosening 3 to 5 screws and a bit of nudging around the edges to open up. The Z1 actually opens with two clips like a briefcase and even has a strut to hold the works open. The HDD and optical drives are removable in seconds. While you won't be upgrading the motherboard or video card, replacing memory and drives is so easy a nine year old could do it.

The new iMac is another story entirely, requiring a heat gun to melt the glue keeping the screen attached to the chassis. No thanks!

6. Damn Laptops

I hear you. For one who can type 80+ wpm, I can't type for diddly-squat on these new laptops. But I wasn't aware of the tap to click fix. Thanks. I would still have my ancient and honorable laptop for mobility; It just seems that having a larger screen to see what I am looking at (old-age eyes here) would work better for me, along with the regular type keyboard that I have been used to over the years. Hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving. Thanks for your reply.

17. how i hate tap to click. it is evil.

i run arch linux and every few updates pacman copies my synaptic config to a backup and i have to refresh them. otherwise exactly that. right now my trackpad is set to 'hard to use'. at work i carry a logitech usb wireless mouse around from laptop to laptop.

7. There's only one type of "all-in-one" that I like

and that's the iMac.
If you have wireless, you only have to plug in one cable for power, and that's it!
The monitors are a great size, and the keyboards are quite good.
If you must have windows, I cannot help you with an all in one, because afaic, they all stink!

10. Oh, you can look at a refurb

They are much less. Check e-bay and such. Be sure to get an Intel based Mac, because the older ones are no longer supported.
A core two duo should cost around $500. Not a new one, but one about 3-4 years old.

12. If you have a problem with more than one wire, you need to avoid computers

13. If you need to avoid computers, you might as well

forget the 21st century!
The part that a lot of folks don't seem to understand is that computers have to be easy for EVERYONE to use. I should know, I have to support about 2000 users, and have been for the past 20 or so years. You have to make them easy for the less fortunate of us who just don't get everything about computers.